RV People Are Friendly

Last summer Alice and I visited Steve and John twice in West Virginia with our motorhome. Both times we stayed at the Stuart Recreation Area, which is part of the Monongahela National Forest. The campsites there are separated from each other by large wooded areas. It is quiet and private there.

This summer in preparation for our mid-May trip to visit, we called the folks at the Stuart to make our reservation. It seem that last fall Hurricane Sandy did some serious damage, such that they wouldn’t be ready to open until Memorial weekend. I even offered to bring my chainsaw along and cut my way in, but the lady on the phone said that wasn’t possible. So I asked her about alternative places to stay, and she suggest Revelle’s in Bowden. I called and they did have an opening for the time period we wanted, so we made the reservation, plugged their address into the GPS, and proceeded on our adventure.

The first thing that struck us about Revelle’s was the un-RV-like road that lead to the campground. It was a twisty narrow piece of blacktop that had large drop-offs where the shoulders were supposed to be. Our RV is big and wide, and when we’re towing the car, we can’t back up. Fortunately no one met us coming up the road, and we found Revelle’s without much difficulty.

The person at the check-in was very nice, took our money, and drew us a map to our site. The layout at Revelle’s was very different from the Stuart. It was essentially a large field next to the Cheat River, with camper sites every 25 feet or so. We found our spot, and the guy across from us volunteered to help us back in. Once I was most of the way back, two ladies from the site next to ours came out to tell us we were supposed to move over a bit. Some picnic tables had been moved where we were supposed to park by the man mowing the grass, and he hadn’t moved them back. So the two elderly ladies started moving them for me. I jumped out of the RV and worked with them to get the tables out of the way, and then backed in without further difficulty.

Once we were backed in where we belonged, we hooked Franco up to his leash, and took him for a short walk. Immediately the people across the way ran over and asked to pet our dog. We said sure. Among them were two teen-aged girls that were very friendly and polite, and who asked lots of questions about Franco and said what a nice dog he was. Well, there is no quicker way to friendship between people than dog praise, in my experience.

During our stay, we walked Franco numerous times, and struck up conversations with lots of people. Everyone was very friendly, asking where we were from, how many fish we’d caught, etc etc. After a bit, I came to realize that although the two RV parks we’d stayed at in West Virginia were laid out very differently, we found the crowded open layout at Revelle’s nicer than we thought we would. Staying in a place like that seemed to instantly put us in the RV in-group. Every person there know what it’s like to move some fairly big and heavy equipment along the road, and that seemed to entitled us to instant camaraderie.

We stayed there for 6 nights, which is a record long stay for us. I have to admit I was sorry to see the place go, and would not mind staying there again sometime. RV people are nice!